Man Proposes, God Disposes

It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them. . . . I emphatically embrace the first alternative. The second might lead to the abominable conclusion . . . that charity is good only because God arbitrarily commanded it—that He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another and that hatred would then have been right. I believe, on the contrary, that “they err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides His will.” God’s will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good. But when we have said that God commands things only because they are good, we must add that one of the things intrinsically good is that rational creatures should freely surrender themselves to their Creator in obedience. The content of our obedience—the thing we are commanded to do—will always be something intrinsically good, something we ought to do even if (by an impossible supposition) God had not commanded it. But in addition to the content, the mere obeying is also intrinsically good, for, in obeying, a rational creature consciously enacts its creaturely role, reverses the act by which we fell, treads Adam’s dance backward, and returns.

-C.S Lewis – The Problem of Pain

~~God doesn’t hate sin because He wants to spoil humanity’s “fun”. He hates sin because sin wants to destroy humanity…

When asked from somebody in my classes if a certain item was sin, I responded by asking them to define sin. When they couldn’t, I defined it for them in simple terms: God terms sin anything that hurts us or anybody else, or any living creature or anything He created and called good.

The knowledge of sin is instilled by way of conscience in everybody born of woman. God hates sin because it hurts us. Always, in some form, long-term or short, it hurts us. He didn’t come up with a gaggle of rules for us to follow just to show us He’s God and we’re not.

He didn’t tell Adam, “On the day you eat from that tree you shall surely die, because I’m the Boss!” He warned Adam by instruction because it was a fact of life as He created it.

Adam didn’t believe God – sin.

Adam disobeyed God – sin.

Adam immediately began the process of dying – sin’s result.

“Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will it not go well with you? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Gen. 4:6-7

When God said “it desires to have you”, the emphasis was – “it desires to conquer, consume, and utterly destroy you”.

God created us, knows how He created us, and knows how we need to function for the optimum of life, leading to fullness of life. And He gave us an “Owner’s Manual” so we could know, too – and know Him; through His word and His only begotten One Christ Jesus.

For those who reject Christ their only recourse to deal with their personal sin is to hide it – or deny it. And denial of personal responsibility is spreading across the land like a California wild fire blowing up a canyon, but not as easy to tame. The political term “plausible deniability” is the operative phrase that has expediently replaced the word “sin.” Words change and languages change but the disease remains.

9 thoughts on “Man Proposes, God Disposes”

Don’t blame God when you are tempted! God cannot be tempted by evil, and he doesn’t use evil to tempt others. We are tempted by our own desires that drag us off and trap us. Our desires make us sin, and when sin is finished with us, it leaves us dead (James 1:13-15 CEV).

As sinners we often have a terrible Stockholm Syndrome with sin; we think of it better than what it is, and we downplay the evil and negative consequences it has inflicted upon us. Which is why I appreciate your post. God didn’t say something is sin to inflict us, rather it’s the other way around, sin is what’s bad for us and others and especially in its offense towards a GOOD God.